Television viewing is increasingly on-demand to deliver requested media content to viewers. On-demand media content can include any type of recorded media, such as television programs, on-demand videos, and pay-per-view movies, any of which viewers can request for viewing when convenient rather than at a scheduled broadcast time. As on-demand media content is requested more often and by an increasing number of viewers, content providers face an increasing need to provide adequate session capacity to timely deliver the requested media content with a high quality of service.
The popularity of various media content assets is transitory and difficult to ascertain for a content provider attempting to determine how many copies of an asset should be maintained to serve multiple requests for the asset. For a newly introduced media content asset, the popularity of the asset can increase rapidly at first and then slowly decline over time. This is indicative of a scenario where a new summer movie is made available to order through on-demand and a large number of subscribers request the media content asset for viewing.
As a content provider, it is very difficult to predict which programs are going to be popular and when. New movies, a series of television programs, a documentary, and the like can quickly rise in popularity and overwhelm an on-demand content delivery system when session capacity is inadequate. In addition, events can occur that quickly change viewer requests, such as the death of a well-known movie star that incites viewers to become suddenly interested in past movies and television programs that the movie star appeared in. Determining which media content assets to replicate for session capacity is typically a real-time decision based on the assets that are currently requested, but does not account for changing circumstances and the transitory popularity of different media content assets.